This post outlines the types of accounts that you are likely to have associated with your hosting account and what they are for.
Your Institutional Account
To sign up for a hosting account you must have a campus network ID and password. After you have activated your hosting account you will continue to use your campus ID and password to access your account. Each time you login you will be directed to your cPanel dashboard.
Your cPanel Account
When you first sign up for a hosting account and choose a subdomain name, a cPanel account will be generated which provides you with access to manage your web hosting space. Your cPanel account is automatically associated with your campus ID. Therefore, your campus ID and password will grant you access to your cPanel account. This means you will only need to remember your .edu email address and password to use your cPanel account.
Your Application Administrator Accounts
Every time you install a new application in cPanel, an administrator account for that application will be created. You will likely use these accounts very often but may not need to remember the administrator account username and password for each application install. For instance, WordPress installations allow you to automatically login to your administrator account by clicking the admin dashboard link in your list of applications. For any other application installs you cannot automatically log in through this link, but you can change your password at any time through changing your application install’s settings from Installatron within cPanel.
Alternative Login Methods
If you do not want to login to your cPanel account using your campus ID and password, you can bypass cPanel entirely and login directly to the website application’s dashboard login page. (i.e. yourdomain.com/wp-admin)
Upon installation of any application, you will likely receive an email confirming the user id/password combination you chose for your administrator account. It will also have information about how to access the login page for that application. You may wish to make sure you don’t delete this message so you can refer back to it at a later date.
Depending on the application you’re working with, managing and resetting the password for this account will vary. If you’ve used Installatron (in cPanel) to install the application, however, you can always review the account credentials:
- Navigate to cPanel
- Click My Apps under the Applications section.
- Click the Edit button (this looks like a blue wrench).
- Scroll down to find the Administrator Username and Password.
In addition, most applications should have some kind of password reset link on the login page.
Other Types of Accounts
In addition to the three account types outlined above, there are a few other kinds of accounts you may have as part of your hosting plan:
- Email: If you set up an email address for your domain, you will have an account associated with this.
- SFTP: If you set up SFTP on your hosting account, you will need to set up an account for this.
- Application User Accounts: In addition to the administrator account that you set up when installing an application, most applications will also let you set up user accounts.
